Dozens of children in Don Dale over Xmas

Dozens of children are likely to spend Christmas behind bars in the Northern Territory’s infamous Don Dale youth detention centre, four years after the government agreed to close it.

Inmate numbers climbed to 44 in recent months after the NT government toughened youth bails laws earlier in the year.

Darwin lawyer John B Lawrence SC is representing an 11-year-old Indigenous boy on remand in the former men’s prison.

“It’s disgusting that a child so young is in custody and away from his family over the holidays,” he told AAP on Wednesday.

“But it’s a fact and it’s appalling that we accept and let this happen in Australia”.

Mr Lawrence said the facility was “dystopian and derelict” and his client was locked in a cell alone most of the day without activities.

In 2017, the NT government accepted recommendations from the NT juvenile justice royal commission to shut down and replace Don Dale.

But four years on, a new facility is not complete.

Most of the alleged child offenders the NT justice system deals with are Aboriginal.

“If they were white kids locked up there would be outcry,” Mr Lawrence said.

“But because they’re Indigenous this country culturally accepts this horrendous behaviour”.

Mr Lawrence, a former president of the NT Bar Association and former president of the Criminal Lawyers Association, said it was “shameful and embarrassing” and it must stop.

“People need to take direct action to change this situation and end jails continuing to hold Aboriginal children,” he said.

“All other methods have failed.”

He called on prominent Australians to lead “lawful and peaceful civil disobedience” against the NT’s justice system.

“That could work. Let’s end this now,” he said.

There are currently 34 children detained in the Don Dale youth detention centre and 15 in an Alice Springs facility, according to an NT government census on December 13.

The final report of a royal commission into the protection and detention of children in the NT revealed systemic and shocking failures, including regular, repeated and distressing mistreatment of young people.

The NT government accepted in full or in principle all 227 recommendations.

Dozens of children in Don Dale over Xmas
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